2020 Colourwork Club

The 2020 Colouwork Club ran as a subscription club at the beginning of the year and featured three accessory patterns designed to progressively grow your colourwork skills. All three patterns are now available as individual patterns and as kits.

The Brunstane Cowl

The Brunstane cowl is an ideal beginner colourwork pattern that makes a great gift. The pattern includes lots of tips and links to detailed tutorials, so you can be sure of a successful project.

The cowl is a simple tube, tapered slightly so that it flares around the shoulders and hugs the neck. This shaping is achieved by simply changing to a smaller needle size; there’s no increasing or decreasing to worry about combining with the colourwork. A cowl is also the ideal circumference to practice your stranded colourwork tension on: working on one circular needle means there are no “ladders” to worry about at the gaps between needles, and the larger circumference and regular length needle tips helps knitters to relax.

If you haven't tried Colourwork before we've put together a handy guide to getting started with stranded colourwork, and the Broughton cowl is the perfect project for trying out your new skills.

The Bellfield Hat

Embrace cosy and festive this winter with Bellfield, a cute stranded colourwork beanie featuring traditional Scandinavian snowflake motifs and a stunning snowflake crown. Bellfield is the perfect gift - quick to knit but very impressive!

The Bellfield Hat was designed for the club as a follow on project from the Brunstane cowl. The colourwork beanie is worked bottom-up with a cosy folded brim and enough slouchy length to pull down over your ears. The contrast colour cast-on is worked using what might become your new favourite cast on for ribbing: an alternating cable cast on. Working bottom-up means you can begin the colourwork comfortably on a 16 or 20" needle and switch to double pointed needles or magic loop once you’ve established your tension.

Work your way through Bellfield accompanied by the following tutorials, all created specifically to support this pattern.

Colourwork Club: Bellfield Hat

Stranded Colourwork: Tips for Small Circumferences

Decreases in Stranded Colourwork

The Broughton Mittens

The Broughton mittens are a fun, challenging project featuring design details inspired by traditional Norwegian and Estonian mittens. Choose between traditional mittens and practical flip-tops.

These mittens feature simple but effective small repeating stitch patterns, combined with a bold geometric cuff pattern. They include some new, fun techniques like the Estonian Kihnu braids at the cuff, and the afterthought method to create the flip tops and thumbs. These openings are worked using an afterthought method where stitches are held by knitting them with scrap yarn, which is removed afterwards to create an opening and live stitches — this is a really useful technique that you can use for sock heels and pockets, as well as thumbs. For extra warmth, softness and a neat finish the mittens are lined with lambswool, which is used held double to add a pop of contrast on the cuffs.